


Apricity

by orphan_account



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: I have No Excuse, Multi, enemies to friends to lovers maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 06:32:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9708269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It's a new world. all anyone can  do is keep moving forward, and Tifa never expected that the people she would be trying to keep up with would be her former enemies.But life is life. And time, marches.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I APOLOGIZE FOR THIS. I JUST. REALLY NEED EVERYONE'S BEHAVIOR IN ACC/C TO MAKE SENSE OKAY.
> 
> uuuhhh content warnings. Aclohol use. Sex m. Attempted murder.
> 
> Also this is deeply, deeply imperfect. soz.

When they first come around, it's three days after the lights return. And that's probably why. At first there had been gasoline, but not enough, and after the long cold and dark of February, March, and an April that had yet to warm, the streets of Edge had lit up without warning. No one knew it yet, but that was Rufus Shinra's big come back, and WRO's maiden voyage into governance. And everyone is still giddy on that first hit of electricity, familiarity.

She thinks it's Cloud when the door chimes, and doesn't turn around. The bar is open, but nobody ever comes in this early, this day of the week. When she registers movement at the bar behind her, she turns to give him a smile, and she doesn't instantly break the bottle in her hand over one of their heads, because at first she isn't sure what she's looking at. Faces closed, not fierce. Dirty nails. Black suits instead of blue.

The one she thinks is called Reno shoots her a creaky grin. And she still doesn't break his face, because Reeve had been by first. Had told her that he would not return to his post with the company, but he hasn’t renounced it either.

“There is work to be done, after all.”

“Rufus Shinra isn't his father. Never has been.”

She trusts Reeve, so she gets them their liquor and lets them be, and they let her be, which she isn't expecting either.

They tip really, really well.

Reeve stops by too, as they're walking out the door, and Tifa suddenly feels she's been set up. The bell chimes twice, two out the door, one in. Two empty tumblers and a handful of bills on the counter, and Reeve sits down exactly where the Turks had been. Pushes those things just a little to the side. Orders two glasses from her own favorite tap, ands asks her to sit with him a minute. 

That's how she learns about Shinra's new lights, and that Edge is Shinra's city too, already. Reeve asks for her trust on this, and he has it, but she's still furious.

The Turks show up off and on after that. At first only when it's quiet, and they're the same. Usually they come together, but sometimes alone. By June, the radio is back on, and it's no secret, to her anyway, if she chooses to believe Yuffie, that the hospitals and schools WRO is building it builds with Rufus Shinra's money. WRO distributes fossil fuels, which the skeleton of Shinra pumps out in quantities never seen before, since the environmental damages they can cause are well documented. Reeve has Barrett searching oil fields, but advises them not to get comfortable, research into wind and geothermal is promising.

By June, she is sure of the Turks names, and their orders, and they come in with the regular crowd. Rude peels labels methodically off of bottles, and she always knows exactly what he wants, and here at the end of the world, that bit of reliability isn't nothing. Reno smiles more now, sun bright and genuine and cocky. Even if she hates him still, it's infectious. In the quiet wakes of Clouds absences, and the heaviness when he's present, that isn't nothing either.

Besides. The entire world is gone. Theirs. Hers. She knows their faces, and their voices. That actually is something.

___

Tifa thinks it probably says something about how different their lives are now, that she has forgotten just how freakishly fast Reno is. She realizes that she's forgotten, when it's suddenly in her face again. There's a crash of glasses being swept to the floor on the other side of the bar, and a handful of patrons leap to their feet shouting curses. Squaring up .Tipping their chairs. He's in the middle of them before the first blow can fall, before she can even put down the glass she's cleaning. It only takes a few heartbeats of fluid motion for him to incapacitate the lead trouble maker, the one who'd swept the glasses off the table, and throw him unceremoniously out on his ass.

Rude gets up when the remaining would-be combatants join forces, angry at being deprived of their fight, but figuring one is as good as another. That's really all he has to do. A quick glance between the suits is enough to send them to their wallets, and scurrying out into the night.

She glares at the Turks as they return to their customary places at the bar.

“I could have handled that.”

“I know. Just thought it probably wouldn't look so great, the bartender beating up customers an’ all, yo.” And she isn't sure why, but the way they sink back into their seats as if nothing had happened does more to convince her of The ShinRa's intention for a truce than anything Reeve has said.

___

After the not-quite-brawl, it's like a wall has come down. Reno and Rude come in at least once a week, and the three of them talk now, endlessly. She smiles when she see's them, and she tries not to think too hard about why. The bar is always busy, but it's so good not to be here alone, now that AVALANCHE has scattered to their various places in rebuilding the world, and their own lives. They talk about WRO, and the reconstruction. About the rest of AVALANCHE. About the minutiae of their new lives. Mostly though, they talk about the past, Reno telling stories with wild gestures and Rude providing a low affirmation here, a correction there, a smack to the arm when Reno gets too carried away. Herself, she has the slums to talk about. Bar stories and survival stories. And star-stories, and her friends out under them. They all have the terror-tight days of reddening sky.

It's a particularly raucous evening, and she's teasing Reno, and Rude is letting her. Encouraging even, with the way his eyebrows quirk behind his shades.

“But really? 'We're still victorious?'”

“I had to say something, yo! Besides, you'd punched one of my ribs clean outta my skin, so forgive me if I weren't exactly thinking clear.”

“I didn't know that was physiologically possible.”

“Me neither, but I got the scar say's it is. Wanna see?” He's been drinking faster than normal tonight, face slightly flushed, and has his jacket pushed down off of his shoulders before she can protest. She isn't protesting though, because she's genuinely curious. Sure enough, when he gets his shirt open, there's a pink edge and an indentation over slightly too visible ribs, that she's never seen a mark quite like before. He's clearly proud of it. She figures she gets to be too.

“He wanted to try to just shove it back in and throw a hi-potion at it.” Rude rumbles, tapping his beer bottle on the counter in a gesture caught between laughter and severe annoyance.

“Yeah that was dumb.” Reno admits, but with a roll of his eyes. “I woulda definitely bled to death.”

“Would have been fair then.” Tifa says. “Something went wrong with that pyramid spell you use, we almost couldn't get Yuffie out of it. Thought she was going to suffocate.”

Abruptly, they all fall silent. Aware again of weapons only mostly hidden under jackets, and the memory of fists. For a very long time, that is actually a very short time, they look at their hands. Tifa wipes out the glass she has just finished cleaning for a second time, and Reno and Rude both take long drinks.

It's too uncomfortable to last.

“Okay. But what about that time on the Gelnika? When Highwind almost fell over that railing, and Rude pulled him back up and got him steadied before punching his lights out? Gotta admit, that was pretty fucking smooth, yo.”

They all have to agree that yes, it was.

___  
There are days she see's Rude and, honestly, she just doesn't understand what any of them are doing. Trying to do. She understands roads and schools, and Reeve and Yuffie's lectures about the moral irrelevance of funding. She understands but she looks at him and she thinks of Rufus and the old president, and Shinra tower, and she doesn't admit that even she is beginning to trust this tenuous allegiance.

Maybe it's the way the city has grown up around them: lights on every corner, a library down the street, buildings with windows that lose their boards and constructions signs every day. Already nearly whole. Or trying to be. 

Maybe it's the way that he carries calmness with him like a tangible thing, and when he talks about the future, it's in terms she wants; not Yuffie's simple enthusiasm, or Reeve's numbers and piles and piles of paper. Rude talks about tomorrow, and the day after, and the cinema that might be opening next winter, when the absolute necessities are estimated to be complete.

Rude talks about atonement and it stays with her in a way she doesn't like to examine.

But she feels more real when he does, and he when she talks back.

And there are moments, between peeled labels, and absences, and laughter that's increasingly warm that she forgets that they are enemies. They they have to be. Because she can't help but like him but, for now, forgiveness has to mean something else.

He always greets her the same way, busy or quiet, morning or night. A nod of the head and a sideways twitch of a smile. She does the same, and doesn't pretend it's not a little fun at his expense.

At least, she does until she doesn't.

“What are you doing here?” And by now, he understands. She'd been counting on it.

“I'm sure you've heard the saying about friends and enemies.”

“And which one am I?”

“That remains to be seen.” Uncharacteristically, he throws back his whole whiskey before she can move on.“For what it's worth, I could stand to make friends.”

___

There are days Reno comes in and she can almost smell the blood on him. Days when he crashes into the chair that has become his with a smile that's brighter than it, but just as bitter, and she serves him sharply so she doesn't have to look at him too long.

That particular smile grates at her, because she doesn't like thinking about the iron on her own name any more than she wants to be reminded of his. But his moods bring it up somehow. She's made her peace, mostly, but she doesn't want to remember the smell of mako and singed flesh.

“You alrigh' there girly?” He asks her once, the clink of the ice he didn't want in his glass seems almost as loud as the clink of glasses she's been putting away too forcefully when he raises it, drinks. Sets it back down.“You been quiet all afternoon. You got something you needing to say?” He pulls one shard of ice out of the glass, looks right at her as he flicks it out, sends it spinning wetly directly on the counter, and she sweeps it up a in clothed hand, without thinking.

She knows he's baiting her, but she rises to it anyway.

“Like you don't know!” Her fist hits the counter, and she doesn't want to think, so she just talks. “Like you aren't a murderer, like you Shinra scum didn't kill Aerith and...and everyone! Like you don't fucking know!” It's not the fire she wants to spit, not all of it. Not the blood and ashes and burning steel she's been sitting on for months now, but it's the easiest thing. He drinks again.

“Fuck, Teef, we were the one's keeping her safe from you, before Avalanche was, you know, you.” He sounds bored, humoring, like they've already had this conversation a dozen times.“Maybe coulda kept on keeping her safe if she hadn't run off with you assholes.” Like he doesn't fucking know.

“Oh, because The ShinRa gets to talk about Avalanche like-”

“Yeah, you tell me about Avalanche. You go back to Cosmo whatever the fuck and you ask 'em about Fuhito and you come back and you fucking tell me.” And she shuts up then, because there's a gun in his eyes, and even if she knows she can take him she already wonders if...

Silence. Ice and glass. A not-clean cloth over already shining wood.

“Why do you drink here?”

“Where the hell else would I drink?”

“Anywhere. I could kill you, you know. I should kill you. I could poison you. I could wait until you're too drunk to defend yourself. Aren't you afraid of that?”

“Might be I am.” A shrug. Grin going familiar and toothy. A lighter snaps, but doesn't light anything. “But hey, you got the best booze in town. No risk no reward, right, yo?”

___  
Rude is easy to like, with his calm demeanor, and steady hands, and they way his suit fits perfectly, even though she's certain he has to wash it by hand anymore. Violence was never personal between them anyway. He'd been doing one job, she'd been doing another, and there were no faces of the dead that she could link to him directly.

They play a game of light banter and implications, none of it serious until suddenly it is.

When he finally asks her, after nearly four months of flirting, if she'd like to hang out this weekend, she'd have said yes even if Cloud hadn't been closed off like a crime scene the last three weeks.

There is dust in his office, except for wear he leans his sword, but she cleans the damn thing anyway.

He leaves cards on the kids first day of real school, and they all know, they all know he means it but...

She gives up checking his messages, for an entire weekend, between the bars and his sharing, she can’t keep up. 

It's not that she doesn't adore Cloud; he's easily her closest friend, but goddess, she wants to be something that isn't a mother or a sister sometimes. And then the way Reno leaves the bar, pointedly, with a wink and an unconvincing quip about some people having work to do, and the way Rude asks like he hasn't done this in a long time. It's strangely flattering.

It's been a long time for her too, since she's allowed herself to just want something.

He meets her Saturday morning, at a coffee shop several blocks from the bar, because she's nervous still what the rest of AVALANCHE might think. But then, neither of them had actually called it a date. 

Her curiosity spikes when she arrives, and rather than joining him at the table where he’s waiting, she’s directed outside. He stops a few parking spaces down, by a motorcycle, and tosses her a one-sided grin with a little more quirk than usual, and pair of goggles. She catches them without thinking, but the question is out of her mouth almost before that even. 

“I thought we were meeting for lunch?”

“We are, “ He assures. The same neutral tone with which he orders ‘the usual’ and that gives her confidence, somehow, he mounts the bike and gestures her onto it behind him, “but not here.” Tifa recognizes the model, a few years older than Clouds. She knows it’s fast, and knows it can handle a lot more than fresh laid city street. 

The goggles fit loose on her, and she glimpses hint of red caught in the cinch but she can hardly get them fit and on her head quickly enough. Feels immediately lighter and brighter for the weight of them. How long has it been since she’s ridden somewhere?

And they do ride. And ride. And ride and ride. On past the limits of the city first, and then the stretch where wasteland gave way to green, and on, and on.

 

And if this is where Cloud goes all the time, she's not sure how much she can blame him. Maybe a tiny little bit more for never taking her with because, damn. He’d been holding out. 

The wind whips her hair from her face and she drinks it in in huge lungfuls; mountain girl thirsty for cool and clean and the scent of grass. The goggles keep the wind from her eyes and for the first time in weeks she has as much open sky as she can fill them with, as many rolling hills. They round a corner onto a stretch of long and straight, and it occurs to her that they could test the engine here. It’s exhilaration, not surprise, that tightens her whole body through when she suggests it, and he complies.

Tifa holds tight to Rude for the sheer thrill of of, for being able to. She’s strong enough to lock her ankles over his, or curls her fists in his jacket and keep on that way, but that isn’t what she wants to do.

They stop some twenty kilometers into the plains. Nothing here but grass and sky, foothills hiding the city from view. 

Her lungs still feel ready to burst for so much good fresh air, the pleasant sting of wind and she finds herself laugh, when he struggles briefly unhooking the cooler that he’s strapped to the side of the bike, and takes it from him, and dashes out somewhere a few yards from the road where she can take off the goggles, take off her boots. Just breath. Just feel grass between her toes. 

He doesn’t seem to object any. Doesn’t even say anything but ‘Well someone’s happy’, as he kicks the bike into break and follows her. 

It turns out, they are having lunch after all. Someone, not himself, Rude assures after a moment of embarrassment, has packed it for them.

He apologises, also. Whoever it is that’s that’s packed it has packed an extra bottle of wine and a small cache of safe-sex pamphlets. But she can see he’s trying not to laugh, with a lot more success than she’s having. 

“I didn’t...I didn’t even know they made these in ribbed and flavored. And I know a lot of things about...Aren’t they for different things?”

“That’s what I thought as well. May I suggest simple marketing?”

“Sue you may. Maybe not the smartest marketing though.”

“I don’t aim to disagree.”

They unpack everything else too, and it’s a bit less exciting. But if gives them the opportunity to chat. To brush hands. To stretch their now-tired muscles and lay in the sun and dig hands and toes into the dirt, and hook them, now and then, as conversation and tone allow.

He tells her about sun glinting white on salt-waves as a child. About big family and shucking clams.

She tells im about mason jars. About campfires and the close-knit not quite friends of small towns, and travel posters on bedroom walls.

They tell each other about rats in the slums, human and otherwise. About metal skies and red skies. About the future. 

Eventually, they are still talking without sandwiches and fruit salad to hide behind. 

Eventually, they are quiet. Uncomfortably, and then comfortably. 

“Can I kiss you?”

Yes, is on her tongue. Yes and yes and why not sooner but-

“Aren't you and Reno...you know...?”

Because she’s seen them, pressed against the alley walls after closing. And She’s seen them, trading glances and brushing hands on small partings. But she wants. 

“Together?” An amused quirk of the eyebrow. “Yes, if you ask me. But don't try to tell him that. This whole thing was his idea actually.” Now that was a surprise.

“Really? The picnic and everything?” A little huff of laughter.

“No. Just the 'going on a date' part. But he helped. Anyway, if you're asking what I assume you're asking; it's not exclusive.” 

And then he asks again, casual. And this time she does say the first thing on her mind.  
And neither of them, apparently, in vain. 

___

Reno is an asshole sometimes, and there's just no way around that.

There are only three things he will willingly order, drink-wise, and he gets grouchy if they happen to be out of stock. He glares people out of ‘his’ seat. When he hears someone in the bar running their mouth in a way he doesn’t like, he makes a big deal of talking loudly, and contrarily, about that exact thing until they stop talking about it, and if he’s really ornery that day, until they leave. 

But when that happens he tends to buy whatever their next round would have been. And Tifa knows he orders this correctly, because it’s the kind of thing they started betting on about two months in, to pass the time. 

She learns that he can't keep still on the increasingly regular occasions that the bar closes with the Turks still inside. She catches him, face dusty as the shelves, with a broom in the storeroom three times. He stacks even the chairs the regulars swear that ghosts live in, while chattering unceasingly. She hands him glasses and he wipes them down, just to be sure. 

She starts to hand him things on purpose. They end up in the right places.

She starts to tease him about it. They get there faster. 

She stops teasing e a few weeks later and everything gets put away at the same pace. 

It is while he is doing this one night, turning a glass at the neat end of a neat row and picking up another, that her phone rings, and she answers it, and the only thing she gets to say is that yes, McCarry called and no, he doesn’t have another order to deliver this week, and yes, yes she understands, and the children miss you, come home soon? And by the time this conversation is done he has finished the last row of glasses, and is watching her out of the corner of his eye, in a way that almost makes her snap at him.

Almost, because before she actually can he says,

“Couple new bars an’ like one whole club opened on the edges of the shopping district last week. You wanna check out the competition?”

And before she can think of a reason to say no, she catches herself saying,

“Sure. Tomorrow?”

And she catches him, grinning wide, and quiet for once, as he turns to check the well bottles for the fourth time that evening.

He doesn’t pick her up, and he’s at least three drinks in when she finds him the next night, following a text to a tiny place called Bricks, but he seems so happy to see her her that she forgets to be annoyed. 

“Hey, I wasn’t sure if-” She’s peeling her jacket off and looking around, not the same clientele her that comes to Seventh

“Hey, you actually made it, yo. Wasn’t sure if-” He’s scooting a chair towards her with his foot, and they both pause. 

“So am I s’possed to say thank you or are you, yo?”

And she can’t help giggling behind her hand because this is just so-

“Both, maybe?”  
And both lasts. It lasts through four rounds, and six games of truth or dare in which everyone's shirt is at least unbuttoned and no and one whole karaoke machine is broken. And a table. Two actually. While they might have held the two of them in Heaven, whoever had been in charge of furniture at the competitor had not factored in very drunk, very happy singing. 

That, and at least one guy with a blackened eye and a possibly broken nose for getting handsy and suggesting she had better places, and pants, to be in. Turns out the human skull does not respond well to being punched in two different directions at the same time. 

They manage to call an ambulance, impressively. More impressively, the manage to totter their way out in the background, just as they see said ambulance get there and resident douchebag get an ice-pack and questioning. 

It’s a long, wobbly walk home and she’s happy. She’s so happy. But Shiva, she’s hungry too. And just a little too drunk to be quiet about it.

They make it back to Seventh, arms slung over shoulders, and bumping into things, and Reno disappears a few minutes into the restaurant kitchen. 

“Did you just make Mac-and-cheese in the microwave?”

“Yeah.” He says, handing her a mug which she almost drops.

“It's spicy.”

“Yeah.”

“...Are there potato chips in this?”

“Yeah.” 

They laps into a quietness then, comfortable and pulsed through still with the cheerful energy of the night, sitting on the floor and leaned against the bars dishwasher. Her body still hums with the fading warmth of alcohol, and the mac-and-cheese really is good. “Teef?”

“Yes, Reno?”

“Like you an’ Rude together.”

“So do I.” She takes another bite, chews contentedly, leans into him.“I like you and Rude together too.” He pulls her in, pushes his face playfully against her hair. 

“Good. Everybody happy, yo.”

___

Then, one day, she really does try to kill Reno. Reno almost lets her.

It 's been more than a year since the plate drop. More than a year since Aerith. There had never been time to think about it, and she wants something solid. Needs evidence, closure, something. So she rides with a salvage crew to the ruins. Her feet still know the path to the church, maybe better now than when there had still been streets, and landmarks. It's utterly surreal. This one structure untouched by the wreckage of the plate, and the curling vines that are slowly eating through the city. The inside of the church is like stepping out of time; pews still in place, stained glass unbroken, flowers still growing.

And Reno. Crouched down at the edge of the flowers, like he's examining them. He must hear her because he turns right then, surprised, starts to greet her with his usual friendliness, and it's so wrong. Him. Here. With his hands in the flowers. With the mass grave that he made close enough to see still. His smile isn't his smile as he approaches her; it's Biggs', Wedge's, Jessie's.

He's saying something to her, but all she hears is screeching, rending metal. All she sees is fire. He doesn't realize she means to attack until she does, the first blow a knee to his stomach, then his face. He staggers back, skidding on the stones, spitting blood.

“Tifa what the-” She strikes again and again, driving him back. He dodges, and blocks, but doesn't hit her. She keeps connecting, with fists and elbows. He's disoriented, gaping holes in his defense. They're in the flowers now, breaking stalks, bruising petals.“Tifa, wait!” Her heel at his jaw sends him sprawling, and she's on top of him now, hands at his throat, squeezing, nails digging in.

She's fighting stupid and she knows it. His hands are free, and she's wide open. He still has his mag-rod strapped to his wrist. He could hit her. Electrocute her. He doesn't.

He is strong, but he's also light, and she is rabid. He scrabbles at her arms and he bucks and he pleads with his eyes. His pulse hammers against her palms and up through her ribcage as his face contorts, and it's a heady, ethereal rush; the life slipping out of him.

Then the blood vessels in his eyes start to burst. Little spots of red in the whites.

And she can't.

Blood in his eyes, in his hair, on the flowers, on her hands.

It's all too much. Death, blood, fear, rage. She can't. She doesn't want it anymore. She lets go, sits back on his hips and crumples into herself while he shakes with gasping, painful breaths. All of the memories of smoke and flame and twisting metal are tearing, battering against the inside of her skin.

He must see it when he looks at her again, because he's dragging her up and outside, spilling hoarse nonsense a mile a minute. “No, I know, Tifa I know, come on come on.” They stumble down the steps, into the open, past broken glass and the shells of vehicles she can hardly see anymore. “You're fine, you're gonna be fine, come on.” They stop at the edge, by the burnt out hull of a truck.

He tries to take a breath, chokes on it. Tries again and pulls his lungs full once and screams, long and ragged. Turns back to her. “Come on Tifa, come on, you ain't done. Get it out, you have to get it out of you.” She feels his hands on her arms and his chest at her back and she's pulled around to face the plate and the wreckage and she's screaming too. It hurts, the blood and the death and the fear and the rage bubbling out of her throat over and over like drawing poison until there's nothing left of it. When she starts to cry, and her knees buckle, he helps her sink down safely, and then he draws away and doesn't touch her again.

When she finally gets her breathing under control, and wipes her eyes, they're just sitting together, leaned against the ruined bulk of the truck, looking out at the abandoned sector, and past that the wall of metal where home used to be. And he's just waiting quietly, with his chin in his hand, and dark purple blooming from his cheek to his eye, and not bothering to wipe away the blood leaking from his lip and and his eyebrow, and the sun bright on his skin. She thinks, she ought to say something, anything, so she says

“You were visiting Aerith?” He lights the cigarette that had been just hanging between his lips.

“...Yeah. My friend too, you know?”

“I don't think she thought so.” That makes him laugh, and his laugh makes her smile.

“Hey now, don't go telling me the rules. If this 'friendship' shit has to go both ways I'll never have any friends. I like her...liked her.” He sighs, and she looks back at her feet. “You want...?”

“Hm?” He's offering her his cigarette. She takes it, even though she's never smoked before, because what else is she going to do? It burns but not as much as she expects. The smoke is light, and sweet. Cloves. Beside her she hears the lighter click as he sets another for himself.

“I grew up there, yo. In Seven. Well, sorta did.”

“Reno, I-”

“I told you already girly, I don't give half a fuck if you forgive me or not. I wouldn't. It don't change nothing. An’ I don't wanna know.”

“Why?” She flicks ash towards him. He runs his fingers through his dirty hair.

“Thought it was the lesser evil, would you believe? We were at war. We didn't know shit. We didn't have time. We were probably wrong.” That isn't what she's asking, but she accepts it anyway.

“Lesser than what?”

“Zirconiade. Leaving Rufus. Hohenheim was a dickweed and a tyrant. Rufus was gonna fix things. We didn't exactly plan on Sephiroth, yo. I dunno, the fuck does it even matter now?”

“I guess it doesn't.” She agrees. The sun is bright, and it's almost warm on the parts of her skin that it touches, but the air is bitterly cold. She's starting to shiver. Her skin feels salty.

“I am sorry. That that was your bar. Your friends.”

“Okay.” 

Beside her, he gets to his feet, crushes the cigarette underboot. She realizes that hers is dead too.

“You ready to go back?” She flushes with something like tenderness, when he offers her his hand, a trademark Reno smile, and helps her up.

“Yeah.”

She's more tired than she's ever been when he puts her on the back of his bike, and guides her arms around his waist. She knows it isn't actually a very long ride back to Edge, but time isn't moving quite right. Or she can't concentrate on it. She isn't sure. She feels hollow, like a paper figure burned to ash, but holding it's shape. She also feels light. Clean. Oddly strong.

She curls into Reno's back against the wind. Lets her cheek rest on his shoulder and keeps her eyes closed. He's wiry and solid beneath his suit. He keeps her warm.  
__

A week later, it's early and the sun slants white through the windows, stirring dust motes as she takes stock for the day. Cloud and Barret are away, working too, the kids have gone to school. The closed sign is up. That doesn't mean she expects to be alone for long. 

 

It's not so much that Turks can get around locked doors. It's more like they don't even seem to notice them.

Not that she minds. She prefers to have the company. So while she checks back and forth between the bar and the storeroom, Reno sits at the far end of the bar and sips orange tea. Not a standard bar offering, but she knows he wouldn’t take coffee. Besides, she likes the smell of it, and the hiss of the kettle in the empty kitchen when she makes a cup for herself too. 

She likes that the air between them is easy.

The cut above his eye hasn't fully healed yet, and faintly, she can still see the bruising around his throat, faded and yellow now. None of this seems to bother him, humming to something in between their exchanged good-mornings and ritualistic did-you-hears. No more than he was bothered by scars she’d given out years before. None of it wells regret in her. But the pricking pain that had always edged around his idle presence has run out.

Checking the well bottles, and then straightening them once more, she makes her way over with her own cup of tea, and settles across the bar and to his left. He offers his own mug towards her and she accepts, clinks them together. 

“I thought you had a Restore?” She nods to his general being, acknowledging anyway.

“Well you know, that stuff’s kinda on a limited use provision at the moment.” He sips his tea.“I’m all good.” A pause, like he’s weighing his options, then, “We okay?”

“We’re okay.”

She likes the figure he cuts lounging at her bar. Likes the now-familiar tilt of his voice. Likes the rhythm his fingers make tapping against the counter, or a glass, or a window. 

“Hey, Reno.”

“Yeah?”

“Who do you like?”

“I dunno.” He shrugs, expression flickering confused at the change of subject. “People who like me.”

“I like you.” She turns her eyes to him again, and he meets her gaze over the rim of his mug.

“That's...weird. But good.”

“What, don't you like me too?” She asks, covering a giggle. He sets the mug back down, rolls it in his palms like a tumbler. 

“Aw come on, girly,” And the grin he gives her is just open, without the usual posturing. “I got the morning off, an’ I’m spending it hanging out here.”

She smiles at that, knowing by now that’s about as direct of an answer as she is going to get. 

It’s a good answer.

And there's still that thrill, in wanting something. I'm being able to reach out and try to take it.

She hops the bar and takes his hand to lead him out of the bar space and towards the living ones, while he starts to crack a joke about unlocked doors and Junon soap operas. They’re halfway up the stairs when she turns to him again, and cuts him off mid sentence. She swallows the sharp, surprised noise he makes when she kisses him. His lips part obediently, and a knot unravels unexpectedly, somewhere in her chest and the back of her brain.

He isn't a monster to her anymore. Not for a long time. But a small part of her is surprised anyway that his mouth is soft and warm; tastes like orange tea and, faintly, clove cigarettes. Just skin. Just a mouth. Just like anyone else she's ever kissed.

Maybe not just anyone because all at once all she wants is more. More hands. More tongue. More sound. And she asks for it by getting a fist in his shirt, walking back faster to urge him up the stairs. He catches up after a step and by the time they’re half-stumbling through her bedroom door he’s got both hands in her hair and her lip between his teeth. Licks sweetly back into her mouth after parting for a breath. He twists to get the door shut behind them, and she reaches to slip the goggles from his head to let them clatter to the floor, and both of them laugh as their legs hit the edge of the bed, have to fight a second for balance, laughing. 

And somehow, after blood and ash and broken glass, warmth and laughter seems the natural progression.

And after, laughter. And after, quiet. Comfortable.

“So that kissing thing.” He says from his place on the floor, leaned back against the bed, sucking on a cigarette but not having actually lit it.

“The kissing thing?” Amused, she shifts position on the bed, rolling onto her side and propping herself up to face him more fully. 

“Yeah the kissing thing, yo. That a thing you want to do again?”

“Yes.” 

“Good.” Grinning slow. Then bright. “Good...great, yo. You want to do it next week sometime?” 

She sits up on the bed now, crawling down to cross her arms and lean in over the foot of the bed next to him. 

“I have Thursday afternoon to myself.”

“Got anywhere you wanna go to do it in particular?”

 

___

She wakes up at five and the light is grey. She goes for a run. She trains with her own weight until she hears the kids starting to move around. She makes them breakfast and checks backpacks.

She checks stock. She checks the registers. She cleans glasses. She goes to market. She writes specials for the day. 

This is her favorite part, really. The specials. Chalk on her hands and the clean smell of it. Looping letters on the board. Her own quiet way of telling everyone her own favorite drink of the right now, or the one dish she actually feels like making today. 

Her phone has not rung in two days, but it doesn’t bother her the way it usually would. She doesn’t catch herself thinking anymore that it won’t ring again.

Her life isn’t much different, really. But it does feel lighter. 

Through the window, she sees a regular pacing. The bar doesn’t technically open for another fifteen minutes, but she’s feeling social today. She finishes the loop on the end of the last letter, dusts her hands off, and goes to open the door.

 

___

“Oh hey! You know don’t you kind of think if he ain’t gonna answer the phone himself Strife should get a secretary or something? Anyway, is he around?”

The voice when she picks up the phone is familiar, but not. Tinny in a way she doesn't recognize. And edged through with a tension she doesn’t recognize either.

“May I ask who's calling?”

“Come on girly! Don't tell me you forgot me already, yo. Barely been gone two weeks.” Has she really never talked to Reno on the phone before? She smiles. He at least checks in when he disappears, apparently.

“I remember you, yo.”

“Good. Shiva Tifa, scare a guy to death. Look, boss has some work for Cloud. I gotta give you to Rude okay?”

“Sure.” Shuffling, the distant sound of an engine.

“Tifa?”

“Yes, it's me. Everything okay? You guys sure took off in a hurry.”

“It's under control. You should be prepared for trouble in Edge However. I’m sorry I can't tell you more but...”

“I understand. But Cloud’s still ...off...somewhere.”

“I thought he might be. Would you mind calling him? It is important.”

“I’ll try. Will you back soon?”

“We’ll try. If nothing else, we’re almost back to Healin. And Tifa…”

“Rude?”

“Keep your good gloves on you.”

“I see. That kind of trouble.”

“That kind of trouble.”

When the call ends, she tries Cloud again. And when she has to leave a message, she goes to the closet, and digs out equipment she had hoped she’d never need again.

**Author's Note:**

> If this reads like an attempt at a persuasive essay for my garbage fire ship. I'm sorry. only not. I refuse to admit how long I have spent on this. Suffice it to say many starts and stops. If you made it here thank you you're the best.


End file.
